Embodiment: The Belly

So we began the new year with a return to the importance of embodiment in journey to presence. We explored our relationship to our bodies (Exercises: Tell me a way you relate to your body? Explore your relationship to your body right now). Do we abuse, perfect, reject, numb, ignore, dissociate from our bodies? Most of us pay no attention until something goes wrong. And then we panic, become obsessed, push our way through, go to into the sleep of denial. Others are preoccupied by their bodies, monitoring body functions, worrying about its shape and performance. We want to perfect it, change it. We want to have a different body. Some of us use the weight of the body to protect ourselves from outside threats.

Embodiment is the opening in this moment. The body only lives in the present. So returning to the body allows us the possibility of becoming present and  opening into the divinity of presence. Embodiment brings with it a grounding and a deep regulation of the nervous system. When we begin this encounter  with the body we inevitably discover all that we have ignored and denied. We can discover a deep exhaustion caused by the driven, stressful, life we lead in these modern times. We can find all kinds of body tensions, pains, numbness, agitations. We may find that we are preoccupied with the body, worried about it, not simply present. Many of us may find it is very easy to be distracted. We get lost in thoughts and some of us may float out of the body entirely. All of this is fine, it is what it is. The practice is simply and gently to come back, back to our feet, hands, arms and legs, to the breath in the belly.

In many spiritual traditions there is a deep rejection and even abuse of the body. The belief has been that only by denying the body can spiritual development occur. Sadly this has become a deep hatred of the body, which most of us have internalized in our spiritual genes. So to welcome the body, to embrace the body as a scared vessel is deeply challenging to our personal and religious beliefs. So don't be surprised if you encounter judgements and resistance to this new orientation.

Embodiment is the doorway to incarnation. The spirit living in and as flesh, as us human beings. Yes each of us! Not just the Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed. It is a journey. Just like at first we practice being present, remembering to sense this moment by feeling our bodies. And with time, patience and receptivity, presence will arise, first perhaps as a subtle perfume and gradually as the substantially of being. So embodiment is the beginning of the journey to incarnation. 

We will be exploring this journey over the next months. We will begin with the head center, the place of thinking, then we will move into the heart, the center of feeling and finally we will return to the belly, the ground of our physicality. And finally we will focus on the soul,  this mystery of human embodied human consciousness. We will explore and touch into the issues and the openings of each these aspects of embodiment.

Next time is an opportunity for meditation practice. Without some daily practice it is very unlikely that there will be much spiritual development or unfolding. So the biweekly sessions focusing on meditation are very important. You will discover, if you do not already know, that meditation is much more difficult alone. It is easy to become disheartened and give up. Just as meditation is a continual return  from the tendency of distraction, so is getting back up and remembering our commitment to daily practice. We keep coming back. We keep beginning again. Meditating in a group offers a support -- a field of presence, commitment and sincerity -- which makes it possible for us to continue when we become discouraged. Remember the spiritual joumey is the journey of a life time. So along the way we need the help of our fellow travelers, and all the reminders to practice.